In 1947, the sociologist Fei Xiaotong published a series of essays on rural society, collected in 1948 as Rural China (乡土中国). In them he named the pattern of Chinese social relations chaxu geju (差序格局), the differential mode of association.
“Our pattern,” he wrote, is like “the ripples that spread out in circles when a stone is thrown onto the water. Each person is the center of the circles pushed out by his own social influence.”
The Duke of She told Confucius: “In my village there is an upright man. When his father stole a sheep, he testified against him.” Confucius replied: “The upright in my village are different. A father conceals for his son, and a son conceals for his father. Uprightness lies in this.” (Analects 13.18)
Later law reflected the same principle. The Tang Code did not punish members of the same household and close relatives who concealed one another’s crimes.
Under Article 193 of the Criminal Procedure Law, a court may compel a witness who refuses without good reason to appear in court. The law makes one exception: the spouse, parents and children of the accused. The same rule stood in the 2012 version of the law as Article 188.
The exemption protects close relatives from being forced into court as witnesses against the accused.
礼不下庶人，刑不上大夫. “The rites do not reach down to the common people. Punishments do not reach up to the high officials.”
The line comes from the chapter Quli in the Book of Rites, one of the Confucian classics.
The Tang Code listed eight groups whose crimes were to be “deliberated” (八议). The first was the emperor’s relatives. The second was his “old associates,” people who had long attended him and enjoyed his favor. Others included the worthy, the able, those with merit and the noble.
When a person in these groups committed a capital crime, the case first went to the emperor for deliberation. The principle stayed in Chinese law codes for more than 1,600 years. It did not apply to the “ten abominations,” the gravest crimes.
自己人 Our own people, those close to us.
胳膊肘往外拐 The elbow bends outward. Said of someone who helps outsiders against their own people.
肥水不流外人田 Rich water does not flow into an outsider’s field. Keep the good things within the family.
In the state of Wei, the minister Shi Que had his own son, Shi Hou, killed in the state of Chen, because the son had joined the usurper Zhouxu. The Zuo Zhuan comments: “Shi Que was a loyal minister. ‘Destroying kin for the great righteousness,’ that is what it means.”
The idiom 大义灭亲 is still used for a person who does not shield a guilty relative from punishment. It is remembered because it goes against the expected loyalty.
In 2018, Chinese media reported on dashuju shashu (大数据杀熟), “big-data killing of the familiar.” Some defined it as internet companies using their customer data to show existing customers higher prices than new customers for the same product or service.
The name expresses the expectation that a familiar customer deserves better treatment.
In chapter 4 of Dream of the Red Chamber, the new magistrate Jia Yucun takes up a murder case. A clerk shows him an “official’s protective charm” (护官符), a list of the four great families of the area: Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue. “These four families are all linked by kinship. If one suffers, all suffer. If one prospers, all prosper.” The killer is a Xue.
Jia Yucun closes the case without punishing him. The chapter title calls it “a muddled verdict in a muddled case.”
In The Essence of Chinese Culture (中国文化要义), published in 1949, the philosopher Liang Shuming argued that China is a society “based on ethical relations” (伦理本位).
A 2024 study of the book sums up his view: “Ethics begins in the family, but it does not end in the family.”